MS COMPRESS 5.0 Format
Intel byte order
Incomplete information

Information from File Format List 2.0 by Max Maischein.

--------!-CONTACT_INFO----------------------
If you notice any mistakes or omissions, please let me know!  It is only
with YOUR help that the list can continue to grow.  Please send
all changes to me rather than distributing a modified version of the list.

This file has been authored in the style of the INTERxxy.* file list
by Ralf Brown, and uses almost the same format.

Please read the file FILEFMTS.1ST before asking me any questions. You may find
that they have already been addressed.

         Max Maischein

Max Maischein, 2:244/1106.17
Max_Maischein@spam.fido.de
corion@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de
Corion on #coders@IRC
--------!-DISCLAIMER------------------------
DISCLAIMER:  THIS MATERIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS".  I verify the information
contained in this list to the best of my ability, but I cannot be held
responsible for any problems caused by use or misuse of the information,
especially for those file formats foreign to the PC, like AMIGA or SUN file
formats. If an information it is marked "guesswork" or undocumented, you
should check it carefully to make sure your program will not break with
an unexpected value (and please let me know whether or not it works
the same way).

Information marked with "???" is known to be incomplete or guesswork.

Some file formats were not released by their creators, others are regarded
as proprietary, which means that if your programs deal with them, you might
be looking for trouble. I don't care about this.
--------------------------------------------

Microsoft ships its files compressed with COMPRESS.EXE, for expansion the
program EXPAND.EXE (how original ;) ) is used. The program EXPAND.EXE is
available with every copy of MS-DOS 5.0+, the program COMPRESS.EXE is available
with several development kits, I found it with Borland Pascal 7.0. The
compression seems to be some kind of LZ-Compression, as the fully compatible?
LZCopy command under Windows can decompress the same files. This compression
feature seems to be available on all DOS-PCs.

OFFSET              Count TYPE   Description
0000h                   4 char   ID='SZDD'
0004h                   1 long   reserved, always 3327F088h ?

0008h                   1 byte   reserved
0009h                   1 char   Last char of filename if file was compressed
                                 into "FILENAME.EX_".
000Ah                   1 long   Original file size
000Eh                   1 byte   reserved, varies...
EXTENSION:*.??_
OCCURENCES:PC
PROGRAMS:COMPRESS.EXE, EXPAND.EXE, LZEXPAND.DLL
REFERENCE:?Windows SDK?
SEE ALSO:MS COMPRESS 6.22+
VALIDATION: